Funds will revert to Water4Health Project

March 20, 2017 / 09:03

All funds raised from participant registrations for the Innovation Dinner and Site Visits, part of EIP Water Conference 2017, will be donated to a social responsibility project to be implemented in Macia, Mozambique, called Aqua - Water4Health.

This project – in partnership with the NGO Mundo a Sorrir, Águas do Porto, EM, ICBAS-UP and Engenho e Rio – will assist the inhabitants of Macia, Mozambique, through know-how and infrastructures to provide a source of potable water and sanitation, deemed essential for the population’s public health.

The project will implement the following main measures: activities such as evaluating the population’s needs (mapping of existing wells and water quality screening, determining the number of consumers, evaluating past and current data about the population’s sanitation, evaluating the need for boreholes and water access points and their potential location); drilling boreholes associated to water tanks to be connected to an underground potable water distribution network reaching community access points at key locations; and creating and empowering a water committee consisting of local members.

This initiative will contribute to reducing gastrointestinal diseases by 50%, preventing the intake of non-potable water, raising awareness about inappropriate water uses and increase the infrastructures’ self-sustainability.

Mundo a Sorrir (World Smiling) is a non-governmental organisation founded in 2005 in Porto that promotes health, oral health and healthy lifestyles in Portugal and in Portuguese-speaking African Countries (PALOP). The entity’s objective is to provide well-being in poor, excluded and marginalised communities.

Its initiatives focus on education and fostering behavioural changes, in which oral health is meant to be used as a key tool in the fight against social exclusion and in the positive transformation of the cycle of poverty.
The human right to water, proclaimed by the United Nations, is essential “for leading a life in human dignity” and is "a prerequisite for the realization of other human rights".

Thus, extending the water and sanitation services to the most vulnerable families is a moral imperative based on values such as dignity, fairness, compassion and solidarity.

For seven days, the City of Porto, in Portugal, will become the European capital of water and innovation. A set of three major events will gather over 800 participants, including decision makers and technicians of utilities, political leaders, regulators, industry and agriculture representatives, investigators, tech companies, startups, SME’s, investors, and young professionals. These events will be hosted by the Municipality of Porto, with the institutional support of European Commission and the Government of Portugal.